Threatened in some form or other since 2002, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’’ finally arrives to kick off the ever-lengthening “summer” movie season — and a long series of planned DC superhero movies that hope to compete with Marvel.
Director Zack Snyder may have introduced Henry Cavill as the latest Superman in “Man of Steel’’ in 2013, but this bloated sequel is very heavily weighted in favor of first-time Batman Ben Affleck.
The film opens with Supe’s climactic battle against General Zod from “Man of Steel’’ as seen from the point of view of Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne — and it looks an awful lot like 9/11 at Ground Zero.
Three years later, Wayne/Batman still blames Superman for “thousands’’ of deaths at his company’s skyscraper, but mostly he seems jealous that the hero of Metropolis gets better press than the Gotham City vigilante.
After all, Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, is a newspaper reporter, and it’s in this guise that he’s introduced to Wayne by Lex Luthor (a fiendishly entertaining Jesse Eisenberg, playing a slightly more evil version of his Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network’’).
After an hour or so of buildup, Luthor finally engineers “the greatest gladiator match of all time,’’ which turns out to be not only 20 minutes of anti-climax — but the undercard for an even bigger and more ridiculous bout that probably should have ended up on the cutting-room floor.
While “300’’ maestro Snyder puts together some very striking scenes — which may be enough for many fanboys — they never really cohere into a whole. He literally throws in the kitchen sink in a film that frantically introduces characters and concepts while never clearly establishing the rules of the DC Comics universe.
More problematically, even on a comic-book movie level, there is no credible sense of danger like there is in the “Batman’’ movies directed by Christopher Nolan (who takes a producing credit this time). The demolition of an iconic landmark carries no more weight here than in “Independence Day.’’
Part of this is due to Affleck, who tries hard to project weary gravitas like his immediate predecessor Christian Bale as an older Batman, but too often comes off like a self-loathing, Oscar-winning writer-director cashing a big paycheck. Cavill is stuck with a character who spends far too much time reacting to others, whether it’s to Batman’s taunts or the romantic overtures of Lois Lane (Amy Adams).
Constantly threatening to collapse from self-seriousness, this epic has way too much of everything, including CGI and Oscar winners up the wazoo (Jeremy Irons as Alfred, Holly Hunter as a senator investigating Superman and even Kevin Costner in one of many ill-advised cameos).
Gal Gadot has little to do as the first big-screen Wonder Woman until the torturously protracted ending of “Dawn of Justice,’’ which is designed strictly to set up a planned Justice League blockbuster. I won’t give away the big “surprise,’’ but rest assured that like everything else here, it’s telegraphed well in advance.